The Invasion of the Body Swappers
by The Invader Androgynous
Summary: While out on a recovery mission, a precious gem is broken. The next morning, everyone wakes up feeling a bit... different. Complete story.
1. There's been a mistake

AN: To the person who asked on the last fic, I have the "official" soundtrack, and it came with an insert with all the characters names in it. So technically I'm using that and not my fan subs to do the Romanization of the names, but… I had my fan subs long before it got licensed, they're by a group called AE, I like them, but I know I'll be buying the series when it's officially released.

Yes, this fic is confusing; I have a "cheat sheet" of what goes where to write it, and I'll try to make it as clear as possible. If I just use the character name you can assume I mean their personality, I'll specify when I'm referring to something their body is doing.

---

            Lying sprawled out on his back, Ginji shook his head as his vision slowly began to clear. His eyes ached with a dull pain and were extremely dry, causing them to itch. Vaguely, he could hear the sounds of the night. To his far distant left and right, dull street lights allowed him just enough light to know that he was still alive, but not enough light to show him any details of the world around him.

            He forced himself to slowly sit upright, patting his arms and legs to make sure he still had all of them. Yep, they were there, but they felt… odd. Almost like he didn't have a sense of touch anymore, or that something were coming between his fingertips and his flesh.

            Maybe he'd just temporarily lost his ability to feel in the blast. He shook out his head as he staggered to his feet. He and Ban had gone after a large, incredibly rare uncut ruby that had happened to be in the hands of Himiko, aka Lady Poison, at the time. She would have been an easy fight but Dr. Jackal had shown up unexpectedly, angrily demanding to know why Himiko had taken "his job." In the argument between Himiko and Akabane, Ginji had tried to snatch the jewel away, only to discover that Shido had been waiting in the shadows and also saw that as the exact opportune moment to go after the gem.

            The two had collided with each other, smashing into Himiko. The gem had flown straight up into the air, twirling and spinning about in a radiant burst of ruby color. "Someone catch it before it falls down the sewer!" he'd heard Ban shout. He'd attempted to move fast enough to catch it, he'd seen Akabane begin to move too, when the gem had impacted the ground.

            It exploded in burst of dry, hot red air. Ginji remembered his back hitting hard against a building before he'd slid down to the ground, losing consciousness from the pain of the impact. He'd been no match for the force of that explosion, and he guessed the others hadn't been as well.

            "Ban-chan?" he called, his voice echoing in the empty air. Wait… he distinctly remembered hitting his back against a building when he'd landed from the explosion. So why had he awakened flat on his back in the middle of an alley? Was the force of the gem great enough to have leveled the building?

            Panic began to race through his mind, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. "Ban-chan, Ban-chan?" he called desperately, running through the small park the group had been fighting in. "Are you hurt? Ban-chan?! Answer me!"

            No answer save the distant sounds of cars honking and his shoes crunching over dry earth. He stumbled, falling over a rock and landing hard on his knee. A short but sharp burst of pain raced up his leg. "Ow," he muttered to himself, rubbing his injured knee. He happened to catch a glimpse of his hands, unearthly white in the dim overhead light.

            "What… what happened to my hands?" he wondered, raising them up to his face. Was that… was he wearing gloves? No… he never wore full, white gloves. It couldn't be…

            Backing up, Ginji hit his back against a damaged light pole, bumping it just enough to close the circuit the explosion had opened and causing the light to flicker on. Catching a glimpse of "his" face in a puddle, "his" eyes hidden underneath the brim of a black hat, Ginji let out a scream that could be heard three blocks away.

-

            HEVN knew she shouldn't have followed Ban and Ginji, but she had taken her camera along to get some shots of them in action. After all, if it worked for Peter Parker to earn a little extra cash on the side, why couldn't it work for HEVN? The moment she'd seen that gem hitting the ground, and the flash of light that had followed, she knew she was in trouble. She knew she was in major trouble.

            She shivered, her legs freezing. She hadn't thought she'd worn shorts that day, but apparently she had. Her hands were stiff, too, and she was having a hard time moving them from how cold her arms were. Why had she gone out in something so light for a stake-out in the middle of the night, she wondered. Her clothes were also fitting oddly, flapping against her body as though they were two sizes too big for her. She hadn't… shrunk in the explosion, had she?

            HEVN paused in front of a store. It took her a moment that the face staring back at her, while also a blonde, had big cow-like brown eyes instead of her own sharp yellow eyes. It took her just another moment to realize that the face staring back at her… wasn't her own.

-

            Ban was feeling kind of top-heavy. His back hurt, and he wasn't quite sure why. It was too dark to see anything around where he'd awakened, with only enough light to realize that he'd regained consciousness inside the top floor of an abandoned building, a camera that he was sure he hadn't brought on the trip lying beside him on the floor.           The moon came out from behind the shadows for a second and he saw another form lying in the room, sprawled unconscious upon the floor. Even in the pale moonlight, he'd recognize that long hair and the gentle sound of bells moving in the breeze anywhere. Kazuki. The long-haired freak must have been spying on them… again, Ban thought in irritation as he got to his hands and knees and crawled across the floor.

            "Kazuki, yo, wake up," Ban said, shaking the pale boy's form by the shoulder. Kazuki's eyes twitched, then slowly slid open.

            "Oh, it's you. The… organizer woman."

            Ban felt his eyebrow twitching in frustration. "Do I LOOK like a woman to you? How hard did you hit your head when you fell?"

            Kazuki's eyes blinked in confusion. "Yes, you look like a woman to me."

            In the next moment, Shido found himself wondering why HEVN had punched him square in the eye for saying… well, for saying that she looked like a woman to him. And where the heck was that annoying bell ringing noise coming from? It sounded like Kazuki was incredibly near by, practically in his ear, but he couldn't see Kazuki anywhere…

-

            Kazuki, meanwhile, was digging around in the rubble, wondering where his bells had gone. He'd reached up to find them, and discovered not only were the missing, but his hair was gone as well! He was choking and sobbing and trying to fight back the tears that were coming to his eyes. He'd grown that hair out for… for years! Since he was a tiny child! To have it all burned off while helping HEVN do surveillance on the Get Backers… to have it all burned off by the explosion of that horrible gem…

            He paused, wiping the tears away. No, no, now was not the time for tears. He had to find his bells and get to a doctor. He felt strange pain in his chest, and had noticed that it felt slightly… oddly shaped. He must be swelling up from the force of the impact… he needed a doctor…

            A soft voice spoke behind him. "I'm… I'm dead. I'm dead, aren't I?" it asked, a man's voice. Kazuki whirled around, ready to run if necessary despite the pain in his limbs.

            Shido's form stood there, arms limply hanging at his sides. "I'm dead… looking at my own body…" he whispered, trembling as his eyes stared straight at Kazuki.

            Kazuki stood up. "What are you talking about, Shido?" Kazuki asked. "Did you hit your head in the impact?"

            Shido's head shook violently back and forth. "I'm not Shido! I'm… I'm you! Himiko!"

            Kazuki took a step backwards. Shido must have hit his head, if he was acting that oddly…. "Shido, I think you… you need a doctor. You've been hurt and you're talking crazy…" With that, Kazuki happened to slip, landing flat on his butt. He heard the sound of glass jingling together as he landed. "What the…" he asked as he reached around behind himself, shock slowly spreading over his face when he pulled Himiko's poisons out from his belt…

            After a few moments of stunned silence, he looked up at Shido's body. "Himiko? Is that you in there?" Shido's head nodded. "It's me, Kazuki, in your body." He staggered to Himiko's feet. "I… the explosion must have done this to us!"

            "So what do we do now?" Himiko asked. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life as… as… as a useless _man!_"

            "We should… we should go to the Honky Tonk. If this happened to the others, that's the logical place for them all to converge. Once we're all back together, we can find a way to get back into our own bodies… not that I even really know… how we got out of our bodies… but… let's think about that later. I have a headache right now and can't think."

            Himiko nodded from inside Shido's body and the two began walking.

-

            Of course, Kazuki had been overlooking the fact that there was one person in the group for whom going to the Honky Tonk was not the logical first choice upon awakening. Akabane flexed his hands… no, he flexed Ban's hands, and smiled behind dark purple classes. Standing on top of a pile of broken boards from the explosion, a broad smile slipped across Ban's face. "I have the power of the Jyagan now," he smirked, his voice lost on the cold night winds.


	2. Grass is greener on the other side

            Ginji put his… Akabane's… hand on the cool brick wall of a nearby building and eased his way down the alley. His… Akabane's… Gods this was confusing… ankle hurt, possibly sprained in the force of the explosion.

            He made it as far as a bus stop bench before having to sit down. This was ridiculous. He didn't know what to do about finding himself in his nightmare's body. He didn't know what do to about the fact that he could barely walk on his wounded ankle, let alone make it to… to… to where?

            He wondered if he had enough cash in his pocket to get a taxi back to the Honky Tonk. Paul would… well, maybe Paul wouldn't know what to do, but Paul could call Makubex. Since he lived in the virtual world, he might know something about body swapping. At the least, he'd probably be able to find something on the Internet that would help Ginji.

            The first thing he pulled out wasn't money, but a rumpled and bloody tissue. "Eeeew!" Ginji said, dropping it on the ground. Well, he knew that was littering, but there was no way he was going to pick it up.

            There was a cell phone, but he couldn't figure out how to turn it on. It had some kind of key lock that he didn't know how to deactivate on it. Frustrated, he set the phone down and dug further into Akabane's pocket, finally managing to fish out a small black wallet.

            He opened it up, and found himself holding more cash in his hands than he ever had before in his life. His eyes grew large and joyful, sparkling slightly. His ankle, miraculously cured by the concept of being able to use the money to buy himself a decent meal, ceased to throb.

            "Ginji, stop," a little floating angel-Ginji fussed. Strangely, it still looked like Ginji's normal body but with little angel wings and a white robe. "That's not your money!"

            "Take it, Ginji. Akabane-san owes you for all the mental torture he's inflicted on you," a yellow-haired Ginji devil smirked, waving his tiny pitchfork about.

            "It's not your body, Ginji. Even if you do eat-"

          "It'll mean that you're doing a favor to Akabane-san. Can't you hear your… er… well… this body's tummy rumbling? He's hungry. He's most certainly eat something if he were in his own body."

            "Well, I guess that is true," Ginji in Akabane's body mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, even if this isn't my body, it still needs to eat something."

            "That's right! So go out and get yourself some meat. The real stuff that they only serve in high class joints," Ginji-devil argued.

            Ginji stuck the wallet and cell phone back in Akabane's pocket. "I suppose Akabane-san probably likes meat…" Ginji only made it a single step before his injured ankle made itself known again, and he fell flat on his face. "Ouch," he muttered, wondering if the pavement would leave an imprint mark on his face.

            He struggled back to his feet with the aid of a light post. "Maybe I should stop into a convenience store and get a Band-Aid…"

            Pushing open the door and hobbling in, Ginji was for once happy to have Akabane's gigantic hat, as he wasn't sure his eyes could handle the harsh yellow lights of the all-night store after such a stressful evening.

            "Welcome. Can I help you?" a brunette clerk asked. She had three piercings on her left eyebrow and red shocks through her hair, suggesting that she was probably the sort to like a night job. Which meant that she likely didn't usually great her customers so… enthusiastically, if it could be called that… but he looked like one of her own people.

            "I just need an ace bandage. I hurt my ankle and…"

            "Isle 3, near the antiseptics. If you want, you can come behind the counter to put it on."

            "I'd really appreciate that," Ginji said, smiling earnestly at her before limping down isle 3 to find that he needed. Borrowing a small brown metal folding chair from the clerk, he slowly worked the black shoe off and then the sock underneath.

            The ankle looked horrible. It was black, purple, and several shades of brown and blue. It was so badly swollen he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to get the shoe back on, even if he didn't bandage it. This wasn't good. It could be a fracture. What would he do if Akabane's ankle were fractured? He wasn't sure he could go into a hospital safely as a patient, even if Akabane had done it as a visitor. What if someone connected his name to Dr. Jackal, who was surely a wanted man?

            "Sir?" the clerk asked, jarring him out of his mental stupor. "Are you… okay?"

            "I'm fine, I'm fine, don't worry about me!" Ginji replied nervously, wobbling back onto his injured ankle. "Just a little hungry." He looked about the store, seeing lots of good food to be had. The weight of the money in Akabane's wallet practically burned through the thin fabric of his dress pants.

            He pulled out the wallet again as he paid for his choices. Yes, he was right. The address listed on Akabane-san's driver's license was near the store. He could go there and call Paul, hopefully to arrange for someone to drive over and pick him up. Even if Ban-chan couldn't, maybe Himiko-chan could.

            Ginji found himself limping into a decrepit high rise apartment complex. He squinted beneath Akabane's hat against the harsh, sterile, overhead lights. The lobby reminded him of the locker room of a pool: empty, concrete, and smelling vaguely of chlorine. It took two or three tries, but Ginji managed to find which of the keys in his pocket controlled the worn out elevator, which screeched on its cables as it arrived and opened to allow him in, a good three inches between the floor of the lobby and where the elevator had stopped. Frankly, it made Ginji a little nervous, but what other choice did he have? He couldn't climb to the seventh floor with the throbbing in his foot.

            After about four tries, he finally managed to get the three heavy bolt locks guarding the door to Akabane-san's apartment to yield him access. Holding tightly to the bag of groceries he'd purchased at the convenience store along with his bandage, Ginji crept into the silence of Dr. Jackal's apartment.

            There were three rooms that Ginji could see from the front entrance, all of them so tiny that they would have qualified more accurately as closets instead of rooms. The main room, the one he was standing in, contained a single table and a worn-out computer sitting on the floor. A half dozen or so exotic looking plants lined shelves on one wall. The main room also had a kitchenette area set off to one side, and what actually looked to Ginji like a closet with a toilet in it. The second room was probably the bedroom, but the door was closed enough that Ginji couldn't see into it from his vantage point.  

            Ginji took another step into the apartment when he heard the sound. Shuffle, shuffle, scratch. Ginji opened the eyes he was borrowing from Akabane a bit wider, looking around in alarm. What was that sound?

            There it came again. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, drag, drag. Something was in the apartment, something alive. Ginji found himself swallowing hard, trying to swallow down the fear that was sending Akabane-san's heart into palpitations. Drag, drag, drag. He couldn't tell where the sound was coming from.

            Ginji took another step forward, looking about cautiously, his attentions on high alert. He was about to take another step when it sprang. Ginji screamed, the sound of Akabane's voice foreign to his ears. Something hard and fast impacted his chest like a fist, slamming into him and throwing his body backwards. He continued to flail, reaching out for something, anything to stop his fall.

            His gloved fingers temporarily found the counter, but then lost it again. He felt a shock of pain as his body impacted with the tile on the floor, his head bouncing against it as his hat, knocked off by the impact, fell over his face.

            The thing that had flown at him was sitting on his chest, moving. He could feel sharp, needle-like claws dragging against him, piercing through his white cotton shirt and brushing against his flesh. He felt no fur, and he knew whatever the thing was, wasn't a cat.

            Slowly, with trembling gloved hands, Ginji reached up and lifted Akabane's hat off his face. Surprised flushed over purple-gray eyes when he saw his attacker. "I-Iguana-san?!" Ginji asked in confusion.

            The great green reptile regarded Ginji boredly for a second, seeing not Ginji but Akabane, then shuffled off to another dark part of the apartment. After taking a few minutes to try to put his wits back together, Ginji realized that the iguana beast had taken a dump on his arm, and it stunk.

            "Eeeeeeeeeew," Ginji commented, grabbing a paper towel off the towel rack and rubbing iguana dung from the black sleeves of Akabane's trench coat. Looking down, Ginji realized with a dull sense of irony that the paper towels Akabane had in his apartment were covered in images of hearts and flowers.

            Ginji peered into the darkness of the apartment beyond. "Iguana-san?" he asked. "Iguana-san, I'd appreciate it if you didn't scare me again… I'm not really Akabane-san and I'm not used to flying kamikaze reptiles…" Ginji looked down and noticed an empty food bowl sitting next to Akabane's foot, which was temporarily his foot. "Iguana-san is hungry?" Ginji asked the empty air. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what Iguana-san eats… Maybe there's a bag in here labeled Iguana Chow," Ginji mused, digging through the shelves. No luck, so just threw some lettuce in the bowl. He'd heard Iguanas liked lettuce.

            The iguana regarded Ginji from the other side of the room, bored. Ginji regarded the iguana fearfully from his own position. Ginji wondered if any of the others were having as bad of time as he was.

            Ban, in Hevn's body, walked alongside Shido in Kazuki's body. "Monkey boy?" Ban said hesitantly. "I think Hevn is sick. I feel kind of bloated, my chest hurts, and I'm having the strangest cramps in my lower body…"

            Shido froze. "Wait, repeat the symptoms again?"

            "Bloated, chest hurts, cramping…"

            Kazuki's face turned a light tint of red in embarrassment. "Ma-Madoka… sometimes… feels bloated… and gets… cramps."

            "Oh," Ban said shortly. "So it's a woman thing."

            "Yes… you could… say that. You could definitely say that."

            "What is it?"

            Kazuki's face turned an even deeper, deeper shade of red to reflect Shido's embarrassment. "Oh… uh… how to put this… it um… have you ever heard of PMS?"

            Hevn's face reflected a combination of horror and disgust. "Oh, no. Oh no no no no no no. Hevn can't be on the rag while I'm in her body!"

            "Regardless of whose personality is inside it, a woman's body is still going to do what a women's body is designed to do."

            "No… no no no no no!" Ban chanted again, having made "no" his personal mantra since seeing a mirror and realizing he was trapped inside Hevn's body, massive breasts and all. "Could this get any worse?"

            Shido regarded him calmly. "It could. Look in Hevn's purse. Does she have any pads, or just tampons?"

            Ban opened Hevn's bag. "Oh, crud…" was the only reply Shido needed to get the answer. Shido grinned through Kazuki's face.

            "Good luck figuring how to insert that," he smirked.

            "Pervert!" Ban replied, hitting Shido squarely in the middle of his borrowed face with Hevn's purse.

            "Ow! What the heck is in that purse, bricks?" Shido asked, staggering backwards and holding Kazuki's nose, from which a little blood was dripping.

            Ban looked back into the purse. "Actually, her camera is just really heavy. She should upgrade to a newer, lighter one. Maybe she likes having a heavy camera so she can smack perverts like you."

            "Perverts like _me?_ Who has been fondling himself for the last half hour with a dementedly happy look on his face!?"

            "I'm not fondling them!" Ban replied indignantly. "I'm carrying them because they're damn heavy and they hurt my back!"

            Shido snorted. "Tell that to the men who have been becoming brain-dead when you walk past them with your boobies in your own hands. I think I saw one of them walk straight into a light post after you passed him."

            "Then they deserve it," Ban answered with a snort, flipping Hevn's hair back. Unfortunately, he'd underestimated how much that hair could weigh, and the force of flipping it threw him off balance and he nearly toppled over. "This body is so badly balanced! Why do comic authors insist on drawing women with bodies like these?! I can barely move in it, let alone fight!"

            "Yes, but remember the reaction you got from all those guys back there? And those guys are the comic industry's target audience."

            Ban frowned through Hevn's lips. "You mean the guys who asked how much it would cost to buy my panties?"

            "Yes. Oh yes, and how DO you plan on explaining to Hevn that you sold her underwear to an otaku?"

            "I… I'll think of something," Ban said, pushing past Shido in Kazuki's body. "Come on, we have to get to the Honky Tonk and figure out what to do before I have to figure out how the heck you use a tampon, because I have a feeling that would _really_ make Hevn detest me forever. I wonder if anyone else is suffering as much as I am right now…" Ban sighed dramatically, staring off into the night sky.

            "Kazuki?" Himiko asked softly.

            "Yes, Himiko-san?"

            "I have to go the bathroom," she answered from inside Shido's body, a small and miserable whimper escaping from her lips.

            "So? We'll stop and find you a men's room."

            "That's not it. To go to the bathroom, I'm going to have to touch Shido's… you know…"

            "I'm sure he'll forgive you, considering the circumstances," Kazuki said, looking up at Himiko with her own eyes. This must be even weirder for her than for me, having to look at her own body…

            "I don't really want to touch it, especially since I hardly know Shido…."

            "It can't be avoided, I'm afraid," Kazuki said sympathetically. He didn't want to admit it, but he was dreading having to use the bathroom in Himiko's body. "All the more reason to get to the Honky Tonk and contact Makubex to get us back in our own bodies as fast as possible. Here, this looks like a quiet convenience store. I bet you can use their bathroom and no one will notice if it takes you a long time."

            Kazuki let Himiko wander to the back, noticing her hesitate when she got the signs reading "men" and "women" before deciding, and rightfully so, to enter the men's bathroom. He leaned against the front counter, waiting patiently for Himiko to finish with the business that had to be done.

            He raised an eyebrow when he saw the clerk doodling. "Excuse me," he said politely, pointing to her doodle of a man with an incredibly oversized black hat. "Do you know that man?"

            "No, he's just this really hot Goth guy who came in here earlier tonight," she replied, shrugging Kazuki in Himiko's body off.

            Kazuki raised Himiko's other eyebrow. "How did he act when you saw him?"

            The girl looked up, confused. "How did he… act?"

            "Yes, please. This is important. I'm trying to figure out if I know that guy."

            Himiko in Shido's body rejoined Kazuki at the front, looking humiliated. Kazuki pointed to the drawing. "I think our friend Akabane-san stopped in here tonight. I'm trying to figure out if he's… himself, or…" he let his words drop off, and Himiko understood.

            The clerk frowned, looking down at her drawing. "Well… he had a hurt ankle. He came in to buy an ace bandage, some ice cream, some milk, um, eggs…"

            "Wait, did you say eggs?"

            "Yes, why?" the clerk asked, looking confused. Himiko in Shido's body looked down on Kazuki in her body.

            "Someone else is in Jackal's body."

            "How can you tell?" Kazuki asked, confused.

            "Jackal's allergic to eggs in any way, shape, or form. Makes finding bakery goods he can eat heck on him."       

            "And the person who has his body doesn't know this. Will it kill him?"

            "No, but it'll make him wish he were dead if he eats them."

            Kazuki cringed. "I feel sorry for whoever has his body then."

            Himiko essentially grabbed herself by the wrist. "Come on, we have to hurry. We have to stop whoever is in Jackal's body, and I want my body back as soon as possible! I just hope nothing else happens to anyone else in the wrong body."

            Akabane, meanwhile, looked at Ban's body in a mirror. Anger flicked in those dark, hateful blue eyes, and it wasn't Ban's anger. It was Akabane's raw anger at not being able to figure out how to use the freaking Jyagan.

            He smashed the mirror to pieces, not caring if he forced seven years of bad luck on Ban's skinny frame. What good was having the most powerful attack in existence if he couldn't use it?! It was worse than being in his own body, because at least there, he didn't know his final power. Here, he could feel Ban's final body. He could taste it, he could smell it, he could touch it, but he couldn't use it. It was frustrating enough to make him want to rip Ban's brown hair out by the roots and scream through the streets of Shinjuku.

            That, and he frankly missed his scalpels. He missed their smooth feel, the beautiful colors they would glow with when he commanded them, the soft yet squishy feeling when they collided with someone's helpless flesh. He missed them, all one-hundred plus of them, in much the same way that a mother misses her children when they're off at school.

            Well, maybe I wouldn't miss them so much if I could figure out how to use the Jyagan, but that was beside the point. He'd figure out the evil eye eventually, with enough practice. Some part of him wondered if his knives for the Jyagan was a fair trade, seeing as how he'd lived his whole life with his skills, practicing hard to get where he currently was, and the Jyagan had just been dropped with all its power into his lap. However, his ego, the part of him controlling his mind, decided that it wanted the power associated with the Jyagan at any cost, and so he refused to admit that maybe he didn't truly want it in any part of his consciousness.

            He'd figure it out. Even if it took a year, two years, he'd figure it out, and then the others had best beware.

---

            Now, for the completist, "What about Hevn in Ginji's body?" is probably the next important question that begs to be answered. Yes, what of Hevn-san? The last we heard of her, she was marveling over the fact that she could suddenly pee standing up. Perhaps we shall hear more about her condition later. Such are the vague promises the night held for several confused young men and women. 


	3. Abuse of the male body

Author's Notes: Muraki Slavegirl, would you happen to be named after Dr. Muraki? I'm just asking because I once discussed with some friends if Dr. Jackal, Dr. Muraki (Descendants of Darkness), Dr. Evil, Dr. Clive (Jungle Guu), Dr. Claw (Inspector Gadget) and Dr. Giggles (from movie of the same name) all got their degrees from the same Evil Doctor University. I'm trying to think of other evil doctors, but I'm actually drawing a blank at the moment. I wonder what their class reunions would be like… No! You will NOT tempt me to write Dr. Jackal x Dr. Muraki. Oh what a sadistic little story that would make for… anyway, no one cares to read my evil doctor rants anymore, so on with the story.

            HEVN, still wearing Ginji's body as her skin, stood outside the club and swallowed her breath. This was her chance to shine, having suddenly found herself in a man's body. She knew she wanted to do this. She'd wanted to do it since her first attendance at a show, but the fact that she'd been born anatomically female had ruined her chances. Now, trapped temporarily in a man's body, she was so close to making her impossible dream come true…

            HEVN took a deep breath and stepped slowly, one foot after another, into the smoke-filled entrance of the club. She gagged slightly on the thick scent of alcoholic beverages and cigarette vapors. After a moment, Ginji's big brown eyes adjusted to the darkness of the club, and HEVN strode in with as much confidence as she could in her borrowed body.

            "Excuse me," she inquired politely of a man in a red sequin top hooking some wires together. "Is this where I sign up for the competition?"

            The brunette smiled warmly at her. "Well, hello, gorgeous. I don't think I've seen you around here before. Right over this way," he answered, putting a piece of paper into HEVN's hands, which were actually Ginji's hands. "Just sign the liability waver and give me your CD and I'll put you on the line-up."

            HEVN handed over a small burned CD, her smile never leaving Ginji's lips. This was it. She was finally going to get to be… a drag queen. A real drag queen. She signed the form to enter amateur's night and took a seat at a table, waiting for her name… well, waiting for Ginji's name to be called, at least. She was going to take home that trophy and a yen prize in the equivalent of fifty dollars, she just knew it! She just hopped no one Ginji knew would wander in and find her using his body for her own purposes.

            "Ginji-kun?" a voice asked inquiringly behind her. She cringed visibly. Great, speak of the literal devil.

            "Go away, Akabane-san," she said, trying to sound her best like Ginji.

            "Now, if I hadn't said anything and just made you look at me, how would you have ever known that I was Akabane-san?" the voice purred.

            Confused, HEVN turned around and found herself staring into Ban's deep blue eyes. "Ban!" she cried in surprise.

            Ban's lips spread in a cold smile. "Did you think only you could change bodies, Miss Mediator?"

            "How… how did you know it was me?" HEVN stammered, her fingers curling around the fabric of the dress she'd barely managed to shove Ginji's broad-shouldered frame into.

            "I recognized the dress as yours, Miss Mediator," Akabane in Ban's body said politely, sliding into a seat next to her. "Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing at Amateur Drag Night?"

            "I figured it was best not to know the person pleasures of the infamous Dr. Jackal," HEVN answered, nearly as smoothly as any response Akabane could have come up with himself. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled slightly in amusement.

            "Good girl," he responded, never losing that cold smile that so seemed to be his signature, no matter whose skin he wore. "I'm hoping you will sing something that will lift my spirits." He raised Ban's long, spindly fingers and signaled to the bartender. "Allow me to buy you a round, as a favor from Ban-chan to his beloved Ginji-kun."  

            HEVN snorted. "You know Ban doesn't have any cash."

            Akabane looked at her, face blank and earnest. "You'd be surprised by how much they pay nude models at the art school."

            HEVN nearly choked, coughing violently on the bar peanuts she'd been nibbling on since arriving in Ginji's half-starved body. "You… DIDN'T!"

            He waved her off with the hand that was delicately holding a smoking cigarette. "Of course I didn't. Ban-chan did."

            "You really are the most evil bastard I have to work with, but you already knew that, didn't you?" she asked, looking him straight in Ban's eyes.

            Akabane's his smile on Ban's face didn't waver. "Allow me to make that drink a double."

            Meanwhile, across town, Ginji was still lying in Akabane's bed at his apartment, eyes wide. Every time he was about to drift off, he'd hear another skrit, drag, scratch, from the iguana, which would scare him back into a completely conscious state. He realized it was ridiculous… Akabane lived with the thing, so it wasn't likely the massive green lizard was going to chew his face off in his sleep or anything. Still, every time he heard that dragging noise, fear flooded through Akabane's heart and Ginji would sit up, wide-awake again.

            "Ban-chan, where are you?" Ginji whined, trembling and pulling the covers up to Akabane's eyes.

            Ban groaned miserably, lying stretched out on his back on Madoka's couch, a hot pack on HEVN's belly. "Can someone cramp to death?" Ban whined dramatically, putting a hand on his forehead for emphasis.

            "Stop acting like you're the only one this is having a negative effect on," Shido snapped. "This hair is making my head hurt. It's a good thing I was able to prove to Madoka that I'm actually me in this body, or else I'd have no where to sleep tonight. It's a bad thing she's so soft hearted she decided to offer you a place to stay as well until the Honky Tonk opens for the day."

            "Be quiet, I'm cramping. Ugh, if I live through this, I'll never make another PMS joke as long as I live!" Ban sighed.

            "Stop being a baby, it can't possibly be that bad."

            Ban lifted HEVN's hand off her eyes. "Want to trade bodies so you can find out?"

            Shido grinned through Kazuki's thin lips. "Fate just likes me more than you, so at least it gave me something resembling a man's body…"

            Ban tried to hit Shido, but being not used to HEVN's center of gravity, he just ended up with his face flat against the wooden floorboards. "Ow," he muttered.

            Madoka entered the room, her slippered feet hardly making a whisper upon the ground. "I brought you both tea and some aspirin for Ban-san," she smiled gently. As though her blind eyes could see the look on HEVN's face, she added, "the butler made the tea."

            Ban looked at Shido, who returned the look. They were both obviously trying not to let out sighs of relief so quickly that Madoka would be able to hear them. Even though she knew she couldn't cook, probably one of the side effects of the fact that she was blind, her feelings were still delicately sensitive about it. "Thanks, Madoka. You always take care of everything I could need…"

            Oh, great, thought Ban. As if he wasn't sick enough from the side effects of being trapped in HEVN'S body… he was going to get an unhealthy dose of love, dove, and PDaffection to go with it. He was starting to think that maybe Shido was right… maybe fate _did_ hate him. "Hey, monkey-boy, can you still signal your animals with a whistle in that body?"

            "I've tried, but I don't think Kazuki can whistle. How silly, one of the four former heads of the Volts not being able to whistle, of all things…"

            "Maybe you can jingle your hair to command them," Ban snickered.

            A vein became apparent on Kazuki's head, reflecting Shido's anger. "Oh, and can you use your stupid pointy eye trick while you're HEVN?"

            "If I could, would I be having this conversation with you?" Ban snarled. The truth was, he hadn't thought to try it. Maybe he could still use the Jyagan even in HEVN's body… but who to test it on? Madoka was blind, and he could only imagine the trouble he'd be in if he tried it on Shido…

            Ban looked down to Mozart, licking HEVN's feet with a curious doggy tongue. Of course, test it on the dog! That was perfect. If it worked or if it failed, no one would know.

            A few minutes later, Shido frowned with Kazuki's lips. "Snake boy, why are you staring at that dog? If you're thinking about eating it…"

            "What? NO! Especially not with all the goodies here in Madoka's place. Man, you really have it good, monkey boy. Why does fate favor someone who smells like the ape house at the zoo over me?"

            "Monkey house?! Take that back before I…"

            "Before you what? Can't hit a girl," Ban snickered, sticking out HEVN's tongue at Shido.

            "Haven't you heard? This is the age of women's liberation!"

            Madoka put a hand on Kazuki's chest. "No, Shido!" she cried. "Please, remember that that's not Ban-san's body. You wouldn't give HEVN-san a black eye, would you?"

            Shido sank back down into a plush red chair. "As soon as we're back in our own bodies, I'm closing my hands down on your windpipe, snake boy."

            "You're on, monkey freak."

            Himiko removed Shido's bandana and shoved it in his back pocket. "I'm getting sick from the smell of his sweat," Himiko answered when she caught Kazuki looking at her curiously.

            "Come on now, he can't possibly smell as bad as Ban and Ginji do. They sleep in a car; he at least has the advantages of Madoka's well-furnished bathroom."

            "You can lead a man to water, but you can't make him bathe in it. Present company excluded, of course," Himiko answered, suddenly feeling sheepish when she realized she was talking to Kazuki, who by all standards was a rather clean man.

            "Of course. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the standard for grunting in the dirt, repairing cars, Americanized masculinity."

            "I'm glad you're not. You seem more sincere than a guy who judges how manly he is by how many quarts of oil he has in his garage."

            "I don't know whether that's true; I put on as big of mask when I go out in the morning as anyone else does." Himiko looked away, Kazuki's statement stinging directly to the center of her heart. She knew what kind of mask she wore. She didn't understand what kind of mask Ban wore. She'd seen his mask and she'd tried to get around it. She was glad they'd reached their destination, because while she might recognize that what he said was true, she didn't want to discuss it.

            "You sure this is Jackal's apartment?" Kazuki asked.

            "I _think_ it is, but keep in mind that I've only been here once, and that was to pick up a delivery from him when he had a thirty-nine degree fever (1) and couldn't even drag himself to work. I think if he'd been capable of standing, he would have tried to make the delivery himself, fever and all. That man lives to work."

            "If by 'work' you mean 'kill in a deprived manner,' then I agree." Kazuki pushed the summons button on the front of the complex.

            After about five minutes, a familiar and tired sounding voice answered, "Hello?"

            "It's… Himiko," Kazuki said, not wanting to include himself because he wasn't sure of who was in the body they were talking to.

            "Himiko-chaaaan?!" the voice cried out happily.

            Himiko looked at her own body while Kazuki looked at Shido's body. "Ginji," they said in unison. Kazuki turned back to the intercom.

            "Ginji, I'm so glad you're okay. But you're in… Jackal's body."

            "Yes, and I want out. It stinks like old leather and cigarettes," Ginji whined.

            "Are you going to push the buzzer and let us in to come up there, or are you going to come down?"

            "I'll come down. There's a scary lizard thing up here and it's sitting on the counter and loooooooooooooooooooking at me."

            "That's Shinji; I met him the one time I was here. I still have scars from the stitches. It would have been nice if Jackal had warned me that the damn thing had claws before it jumped on me," Himiko snorted, remembering the kamikaze-flying iguana.

            A few minutes later, Ginji emerged from the elevator in Akabane's body, sans hat. Himiko smirked in Shido's body. "Where's your hat?"

            "I kept bumping into doors with it, so I left it. It'll be there when Akabane-san returns."

            Himiko laughed and reached up to mess with Akabane's hair. "You have a terrible case of hat-hair, Akabane-Ginji."

            Ginji stared at Himiko. "Shido-kun, please… never ever say that again."

            Himiko smirked. "I'm Himiko, that's Kazuki over there looking like me. I could say something else. Akaginji. Ginbane. Akabanji."

            Ginji began to whimper and Akabane's eyes grew large and filled up with tears. "Himiko-chan is so mean," he protesting, reverting into tare-Akabane form and stomping his feet. Himiko couldn't help it, she found herself staring.

            "Jackal… does not make a good small child."

            "He makes a scary small child," Kazuki agreed, picking up tare-Akabanji and putting him on his head. "We should find somewhere to sit until the Honky Tonk opens, if we don't want to go up to Jackal's place with the scary iguana living in it."

            Ginji in tare-Akabane form bounced around, holding onto Himiko's hair as Kazuki carried him up on Himiko's shoulders. "Let's go somewhere with food! I want to eat! I need yummies! Akabane-san is too thin; I'm doing him a favor by eating pizzas for him."

            "Well, don't eat any with egg in the dough, or you'll be spending the rest of your night as Akabane in the men's room, wishing for sweet death to come and release you. Eggs make him sick, and I'm not telling you how I know that, no matter how you try to force me to tell you," Himiko huffed, crossing Shido's arms.

            Kazuki sighed, a sweat drop appearing on Himiko's head. "I think it's late enough in the morning that we can go sit on the sidewalk and wait for the Honky Tonk to open…"

            "Let's go to the Honky Tonk, I can't stand these cramps anymore," Ban fussed, dragging Shido out of Madoka's mansion behind him.

            "Be back in the body you love to touch soon, Madoka," Shido said. He was referring to how she loved to feel his face, but that wasn't how Ban took it.

            "I do not want to hear the adventures of barely legal and her boyfriend," Ban snipped, earning him a fight with Shido that lasted all the way up to the Honky Tonk's front step.

            HEVN counted out her fifty dollar equivalent prize. Akabane in Ban's body smiled at her. "Yoush deserved that, thash was tha beshtest rendition osh thash song I evah heard!" Apparently, it turned out, despite weighing more, Ban had a severely lower alcohol tolerance limit than Akabane did in his natural body. Too bad Akabane didn't know that before he ordered.

            HEVN grinned with Ginji's earnest 100-watt smile. "Ish thinks ish desersh this prize, WHEE! Shanks for tha drinks! Wheeeeeeeeee! I wash to go to sha Honky Tonk and show off mah prish!"

            "Shounds good, I wash to go too!" Akabane-holic responded, slinging Ban's arm around Ginji's body as the two wasted youths swaggered their way inadvertently towards the place the rest of the group was converging on.

1. 39 degrees Celsius is roughly 102.2 degrees in Fahrenheit. The measurement is given in the metric system because the story is set in Japan.


	4. Finding Ban

            Paul stared at the gathered crowd. "This is interesting," he commented dryly as he inserted a silver key into the front lock of the small coffee shop. "Everyone except Ban and Ginji is here this morning."

            "What are you talking about?" cried Ban, who for all intents and purposes was HEVN to Paul. "I'm standing right here, and Ginji's right there," he snapped, pointing to tare-Jackal bobbling on top of Himiko's head.

            Paul's eyebrow twitched involuntarily behind his dark glasses. "Riiiight."

            Himiko stepped forward in Shido's body quickly, sensing the tension in the air rising like a storm front. "Eer… sir," she said, uncertain if she should call him "Paul" or "Master". "We seem to have traded bodies. The Jackal and HEVN that you see are actually Ban and Ginji."

            Paul continued to stare at them, the uncovered parts of his face reflecting disbelief and confusion. "April Fool's day is first off an American holiday, and secondly this isn't April."

            "We're not kidding. Some magical gem thing that I was transporting shattered, and there was this burst of light followed by an explosion."

            "And when we woke up," Kazuki jumped in, continuing the story. "We were all in the wrong bodies. We came here because we didn't really know where else to go."

            "We need to contact Makubex. He'll know what to do," Shido added.

            Paul looked back and forth, studying the faces of the members of the group as if to decide if what he was witnessing really was some kind of prank or not. His shaded eyes came to rest on the tare-Akabane, bobbling up and down on top of Himiko's head. "It's only because of that thing that I'm willing to believe you guys. If this turns out to be a prank, I'm doubling Ban and Ginji's tab."

            "Maaaaaaster, so mean!" Ginji whined, turning into a gelatin mess and more or less slopping off of Himiko's shoulders. Kazuki, in Himiko's body still, reached down and picked Ginji up by the nape of Akabane's neck and carried him into the Honky Tonk.

            The screen of the laptop glowed blue, reaching deep into the reaches of cyberspace where Makubex had taken up residence. He looked up, his eyes paler and more distant than they would seem if they were really face to face with his form. He, as with Paul, was originally convinced that he was the victim of a prank, but was eventually brought around as well.

            "I'll see what I can find." He glanced at the screen and turned his head towards Himiko in Shido's body, causing her to start. It wasn't a two way screen; he shouldn't have been able to do that. Then again, Makubex wasn't exactly… a normal piece of equipment. "Himiko-san, I know this is probably a violation of your codes, but I need to know the name of your client so I can research that gem."

            Himiko looked back and forth, Shido's tiny eyes glancing over the assembled group. "It… is… against my code of conduct as a transporter. I swear never to give up the information or confidentiality as a client."

            The screen flickered for a second as Makubex smiled deviously at her. "The client didn't reveal the full dangers of the object he was having you transport. Doesn't that violate the transporters contract?"

            "I suppose it does…"

            "This nullifies the contract."

            Himiko sighed, resigned to the fact that if she ever wanted to be herself again, she was going to have to break her professional vows. There was no second way around it.

            Shido's fingers were clumsy and hard to type with, but she eventually managed to use the laptop to provide the required information. The others, being strangely polite of her request to violate her terms of service in privacy, had taken to milling about the bar. As she looked up from the screen, a feeling of dread stabbed into Shido's heart.

            "Guys… does it disturb you that the only two people who _aren't_ here physically are Ban and Ginji, and the only two people who aren't here mentally are Jackal and the mediator?"

            There was a momentary pause while the other attendees of the Honky Tonk took a moment to break from their milling and let the implications of the statement sink in.

            "Let's pray…" Ginji said slowly, "that HEVN-san has my body."

            "I'll second that," Shido said. "A nice woman like that doesn't belong in a stinking body like this."

            "You take that back, monkey bastard!" Ban snarled, curling HEVN's hands into claws. "I've got some nasty fake nails I'd love to drag across your face!"

            "Don't you dare, Ban! That's my face!" Kazuki snapped.

            "GUYS! I'm not worried about Ban's bathing habits or lack thereof! I'm worried about the possibility of JACKAL possessing the JYAGAN," Himiko screamed with Shido's lungs.

            Another moment passed in which one could have heard the dropping of a pin, or the sound of blood rushing through arteries. Ginji, in Akabane's body, toppled over and took out a chair in the process. "A…a…a…kabana-san with the jya…jyagan," he stammered fearfully, not even wanting to contemplate the full implications of that statement.

            "Is HEVN having it any more of an improvement?" Ban asked angrily. "She'd probably use it to rob a jewelry store and I'd take the blame for it, and that would still leave Jackal able to electrocute us for fun and profit. At least the Jyagan has limits to how it can be used."

            Above everyone's heads, a mental image of chibi-Ginji running around, randomly shocking people with electricity and crying "wheee, now you're dead!" appeared. A collective shudder passed through the group all at once.

            "We should spread out and find those two. We probably need them to reverse the effects of whatever happened to us at any rate. Ban and Ginji, you know this area well, search around here. Kazuki and I will go back to Jackal's apartment and look for clues to his location around there. Shido, make a few phone calls and find out if they've managed to land themselves in jail yet," Himiko ordered neatly, assigning each person a task. Ban was going to complain about Himiko making herself sudden leader, but the others obediently dissipated to do what she'd assigned them to do before she could.

            "This is stupid," Ban snarled to Ginji. "I mean, if they were in this area, they'd have already come to the Honky Tonk, wouldn't they?"

            "Maybe they're in the area but didn't think of it," Ginji said hopefully. "Oh, found a yen! That's good luck!"

            "Ginji, every time you say something like that, something horrible happens."

            "Come on, Ban-chan, have a little faith in caramel!"

            "That's karma," Ban corrected, a bit irritated. "I would if you didn't happen to just naturally seem talented at attracting horrible circumstances."

            A whistle sounded behind them. "Hey, cute girlies, what are pretty chicks doing in a place like this?"

            Ban sighed as HEVN's shoulders sagged. "Case in point."

            The hairy-chested thug threw his arm around Ban, dragging HEVN's body up so tightly to him that her breasts crushed against his ribs. Frankly, it hurt, and Ban wasn't at all happy with it. "Put me down, you gorilla!"

            The thug tightened his grip on HEVN's arm. "I like a chick with attitude!" he laughed, grinning to show a set of rotted teeth.

            A skinny punk with a shaved head came up behind Ginji, who was standing there sweating nervous bullets as he watched Ban argue with the man-ape. "Hey, there, cuteness!" the bald guy grinned, reaching over Ginji's shoulder and thrusting his hand down the front of Akabane's shirt. After a moment, a look of confusion came over his face and he shoved Ginji hard. Ginji felt Akabane's ribs impacting a fire escape with great speed, and a gasp of pain escaped him. This was bad, really bad. Maybe if he knew how to use Akabane's powers, he could do something, but he didn't.

            "The chick's a DUDE!" the punk laughed.

            "Leave him alone!" Ban snapped, trying to break free of the gorilla. The gorilla laughed, sounding like a car backfiring more than a human being.

            "Why do you beautiful chicks always insist on hanging out with skinny gay guys?" he asked. "Real men not good enough for you?"

            "Take your hands off me or you'll regret it!"

            The gorilla laughed even harder. "What are you going to do? Cute me to death?"

            "No, I'll do this!" Ban cried, grabbing an electric cattle prod out from between HEVN's massive breasts and jabbing it into the gorilla's neck. He let out and eep of surprise and fell down, shaking slightly. Ban whipped around, HEVN's hair flying behind him, and faced the bald punk. "Attack!" he shouted, lunging at the punk.

            The punk held up his hands to ward off the attack, but Ban managed to jab the prod right into his neck… only for nothing to happen. "Eh?" asked Ban, staring at the prod. "Low Battery" flashed in brilliant characters on the back.

            The gorilla snarled, getting up. "You're going to pay for that, girl."

            Ban looked back and forth, a giant sweat drop forming on his head. "GINJI, RUN!" he finally shouted.

            The two took off like rockets, the street thugs hot on their heels. Ban crossed his hands frantically over HEVN's chest. "How can she run with all the bouncing?" he screamed to where Ginji should be. "Eh, Ginji? GINJI?" he asked, realizing that no one was running with him.

            "GINJI!" he cried, whirling around and expecting the thugs to be torturing his best friend. Ginji wasn't there, either, but he had just allowed the thugs to get all that much closer to him. Sweating, he took off as fast as he could, trying to ignore the jiggling that was making getting a decent run going not only difficult, but comedic.

            The thugs were gaining on him, growing closer and closer. He could feel their dirty fingers brush against the back of HEVN's hair. He raced left around a corner, then right. A few more feet and he could get away…

            Or he could run straight into a dead end. Ban swore in a definitely most un-feminine way and tried to scramble up the side of the brick wall, which resulted only in him breaking off a set of fake fingernails and falling flat on HEVN's shapely rear.

            The thug and the punk laughed, turning the corner. "You're out of luck, girlie. Now we're going to show you what it feels like to play with a real ma-"

            A flower pot flew out of nowhere and pegged the bald punk on the back of the head. "Gerk," he moaned, falling over.

            "What in the seven hells?" The gorilla asked, whirling around to take another potted plant square in the face. Unlike his companion who had crumpled with a single hit, he batted the remains of the ceramic pot away. "Okay, you wanna-be-heros! Show yourselves so I can wipe my butt with your hides!"

            "Pi-ka-chu thundershock!" a strangely familiar voice shouted. A second later a blue streak of electricity shot down on the gorilla's head. He coughed out a small plume of black smoke, and then collapsed over on top of his buddy. His buddy's body made a sound like it had the consistency of a jelly donut as squished beneath the gorilla.

            "What the…?" Ban asked, echoing the gorilla's confusion.

            "Yatta! I did it!" HEVN cried, her voice still slightly drunkenly slurred. "Yatta, yatta!" She bounced up and down in Ginji's body, toppling over when she landed wrong and giggling from the effects of the booze still running through her body.

            "Told you it would work," Akabane commented, flopping down next to her in Ban's body.

            "Okay, okay, you're right. You do have to yell out the name of your attacks for them to work."

            Ban looked back and forth between the two of them. "Let me guess, HEVN and Jackal. Unfortunately I can't tell which one of you is which at the moment, but I can smell the sake from here. What have you two done to my and Ginji's bodies?" he snorted, practically wanting to punch himself in the face.

            "We went out drinking and had hot sex!" the one in Ginji's body chirped happily.

            Five minutes of silence later… "YOU WHAT?!" Ban shrieked, turning into a glowing-eyed fang toothed version of HEVN.

            "I was kidding…" HEVN stammered, trembling as she hid Ginji behind Ban's body. "I never know I could be that scary…"

            "You shouldn't kid about stuff like that! What are you, some kind of sick hentai fangirl?"

            "I thought it was funny," HEVN meagerly sniffled, sounding strangely like Ginji did when he was in trouble. Maybe having Ginji's starved brain was beginning to work on HEVN's psyche. "I see my body… where's Akabane-san's body?"

            HEVN saw her own face suddenly fall as realization dawned over Ban. "That's… a very good question," he said slowly.

            Ginji, meanwhile, had accidentally managed to activate Akabane's "run very fast" power, and was currently a good three miles away from where Ban was running from the thugs. "Oh, poop," was all Ginji could say when he realized what had happened. Not only that, but he had no clue where he was.

            "Ban-chan's in trouble, I'm trapped in Akabane-san's body, and I'm lost!" Ginji whined, flailing Akabane's arms. "Could this situation get any worse?"

            A long, sleek black car pulled up behind him, the window lowering. "Hello there. Do you need a lift?" a purple-haired girl with dark glasses on asked, smiling generously at him.

            Ginji grinned broadly. "I need to go to the Honky Tonk. Here's the address. Thank you so much!" he cried brightly, jumping into the back seat of the car between two red haired girls in similarly dark glasses. "And to think, Ban-chan says there aren't any good Samaritans in the world anymore! You guys are real life savers!"

            The girls just grinned in response. Ginji leaned back in the seat with a happy sigh. "Yep, I'm so glad you two came along or I would have been in real trouble… hey, why are there ropes and duct tape… behind… the back… seat… Crud."

A/N: I don't _usually_ update so quickly, but I wrote this and the previous chapter together. Gee, even I feel kind of bad for Ginji now… The jelly donut thing is TM my roommate, after watching episode 2 of 100 stories.


	5. Ginji's all wet

            "What happened?" the driver asked, turning around as best she could while still keeping the car on the road. She'd heard the dull thud of something heavy being dropped against the soft interior of the car.

            "I don't know!" answered one of the other girls, shaking AkaGinji's shoulder slightly. "He looked at our rock climbing equipment and passed out. What should we do?"

            "We _should_ take him to the hospital," one of the two redheads said thoughtfully, "but what if he doesn't have health insurance?"

            The purple-haired driver, frowned and held tightly onto the wheel. "So what do we do? We've got a stranger passed out in my car. I can't take him home with me, my parents would kill me."

            "We'll take him to our apartment," the redhead answered thoughtfully.

            "Hey, I don't want a strange man in our place," the final girl yet to speak threw in angrily.

            The young driver dug her fingers into the steering wheel. "So, what do we do with him?"

            After much discussion, the three girls decided there was only one thing they could do with the stranger without getting themselves in trouble with either the law or their parents: dump the guy in the park and flee.

            Ginji opened Akabane's dark purple eyes when the first few drops of rain began touching his angular cheek bones. "Where- where am I?" he asked, slowly sitting up. His head hurt, like he'd been struck with a blunt object to the back of the skull.

            A gasp escaped him. "Those girls! I bet they've stolen Akabane-san's kidneys! Wait… aren't I supposed to wake up in a bath of ice for that? Maybe they did it wrong." He started poking Akabane's sides, completely and totally unsure where the kidneys would be located. "Kidneys, are you in there?" he asked, curiously looking down at Akabane's slender frame. "You'd better be. Akabane-san will kill me if I lost one of his kidneys."

            Ginji stood up and shivered, using Akabane's hands to rub his arms in a futile attempt to warm up. He'd never realized how thin the coat truly was until it became soaked and clung to him as he ran from the rain.

            It began coming down heavier and heavier, until it became so thick that all he could see was a steady stream of white and gray. "It's like being trapped in a waterfall," he sputtered to himself as he sloshed through the park. His borrowed left foot hit a patch of mud and he slid, falling down and throwing mud all over himself. "Akabane-san will kill me if I survive this," Ginji moaned, dragging himself out of the mud and continuing to run for shelter. Of course, not that he had any idea where a shelter would be, having never been to that particular park in his life.

            The previously injured ankle made itself known again, throbbing as he shambled through the rain. Ahead of him, he saw the dark outlines of some sort of building. At least something is going right, Ginji thought happily as he ran for the building.

            It took two or three tries but he finally managed to get a single pathetic looking scalpel to come out of his hand and hacked off the hard metal bold lock protecting the gray stone building from intruders. Ginji said a silent apology to the door and then entered the saving dryness within.

            It wasn't very warm, and the way his wet clothes clung to hid body made it as though he were still standing out in the rain anyway. Ginji rooted around, turning over dried leaves and twigs with his hands. Too bad he didn't know how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Why in heck would Akabane have cigarettes but not a lighter in his pockets, anyway?

             Tools hung on the walls of the small single room; he must have found his way into the park maintenance shed. Ginji curled his knees up to his chest, trying to stop shivering if only for a few precious moments. The cold had pushed straight through him, making him feel sickly. Before he really had any concept of what was happening, he vomited.

            "Great, now I'm going to have to smell that," Ginji groaned, shooting over to the other side of the small shed and staring out into the rain. "Ban-chan, please come save me," he begged into the empty air.

            Back at the Honky Tonk, Himiko in Shido frowned. "We've looked everywhere. AkaGinji is simply no where to be found."

            "You don't think something bad happened to him, do you?" HEVN asked, her worry making Ginji's brown eyes sharp and fearful.

            The laptop suddenly lit up, the ghostly form of that which both was and wasn't Makubex looking back at them. "I've found the gem Lady Poison was carrying," he said, his voice crackling with static. "It's a gem that supposedly has the mythical ability to turn kings into weak men and idiots to genius."

            "And we're probably the only living people who know the myth is true," Kazuki in Himiko muttered, stirring a fruit drink with the miniature umbrella that had come in it.

            "That's not all I found out. The intended delivery point of this gem after it left Japan was the United Nations."

            "What?" Shido in Kazuki asked. "Why would it go there?"

            "No. It was a few rouge extremist members who wanted the gem. According to the secret emails I managed to hack from them, their plan was to use the gem's ability to switch all the world's leaders' minds with minds sympathetic to their causes."

            "With a plan like that, they could rule the entire world! Who would do such a thing?"

            Makubex's image fluttered. "I wasn't able to find out before their security systems detected my presence. The program is still after me now. Don't' worry; it has no idea what I'm capable of, but I still have to go shortly. You have to go to the site of the explosion and retrieve the gem. If someone hasn't taken it from the site, it should still be there. Then you have to get everyone into the same positions they were in and strike the gem again to reverse the effects. However, I need to warm you that-" the image went blank, Makubex having fled back into the ether that was cyberspace.

            "Wait, what do we need to be warned of?" Ban screamed, shaking the laptop so hard that with each shake of the machine, HEVN's breasts heaved.

            "Shido, Kazuki, and I will go retrieve the gem. Jackal, Ban, HEVN, you guys have to go find Ginji. If I don't get back into my own body soon, I'm going to go insane."

            "I don't want to work with him!" Ban snarled, pointing at Jackal, who smiled back and Ban. "Stop that, you're making my face creepy," Ban snapped at him.

            "Stop fighting, Ban, and just go. I have a feeling time isn't on our side in this situation."

            "What do you mean, Himiko?" Kazuki asked, feeling odd to be asking her a question when he was actually her.

            "I mean that according to the myths about the crystal, there's a time limit on how long we have to return to our own bodies. Otherwise we'll be stuck like this until we die. Call my cell phone the second you find Ginji; Kazuki is carrying it." With that, the three were out the door.

            "We don't even have any idea where to start looking," HEVN sighed. "Ginji just up and vanished on us."

            Right at that moment, the front door opened and a wet and sheepish looking AkaGinji entered, followed by two raincoat clad policemen. "Hello, sirs. Did you happen to lose this?" one of the police officers said, referring to the dripping Ginji. "We found him breaking into a park tool shed and he promised that you guys could vouch for him not being a vagrant."

            Ginji said nothing but Akabane's cheeks were bright red, his hair hanging in wet tangles down onto his soaked coat. Akabane in Ban frowned, disliking the way his body had been treated by the illustrious Ginji-kun.

            "Yes, we'll claim credit for him, but only reluctantly," Ban snarled, turning his borrowed face angrily away from the humiliated Ginji.

            The police officer holding AkaGinji's shoulder released it. "Okay, we'll let you off with a warning this time because it really was pouring rain, but you'd better believe we're only doing this because we're nice guys."

            "Thank-thank you, officer sir," Ginji muttered. When the door shut, the four regarded one another. A long pause endured, in which only the sound of Paul's hooka-like coffee maker and the water dripping of Akabane's long black coat could be heard. Ginji kept his eyes to the floor, not wanting to face Ban's wrath.

            Akabane spoke first. "I see you've been taking terrible care of my body, Ginji-kun. I should be offended. Yes… I should be."

            Ginji twisted into tare-Akabane form, waving short and stubbly arms at the real Akabane. "Please don't be! I didn't mean to! It was raining!"

            Ban in HEVN smashed tare-Akabane on the head. "You idiot! I've been so worried about you! I thought maybe I'd never see you again! How could you do this to me, your friend?"

            "Ba-ban-chan?" Ginji asked nervously, having never heard Ban sound so… hysterical… in his life.

            "You didn't even think about me! What kind of friend are you?" Ban asked, HEVN's body breaking into big tears.

            "What the…"

            "It's that time of the month," HEVN in Ginji said dryly. "And for once, I'm not the one having to suffer through it.

            "Shut up," Ban sniffled, feeling the humiliation burn in his cheeks. He didn't care if HEVN's body was making him do it; he was Midou Ban. He didn't cry like a spanked baby in public, no matter what.

            "I suggest we call Lady Poison," Akabane interjected. "I'd prefer to get my own body back so I can begin repairing the damage Ginji-kun's carelessness has done to me."

            Ban looked at him. "You want your own body back? What about the Jagan, the ultimate power? I would have thought a power hungry bastard like you would want to keep my body."

            "Ba-ban-chan… this is a bad idea. You don't want him to _want_ to keep your body, do you?"

            Jackal smirked through Ban's thin pink lips. "I thought I would have fun with the Jagan, but that's just it. It's like a child's toy compared to the things I can do. Being in your body only reaffirms my belief that one day I will beat you, and take your life with my own hands. I'll take the life from this body whose blood is currently mine."

            "My power is not a child's toy!" Ban roared back. Akabane failed to react to Ban's anger with anything beyond his usual cold smile.

            "Truthfully, I miss my weapons. The smooth feel of ceramic sliding against the skin of my enemy, splashing blood on their face, the coldness that comes over their eyes when their souls slip out of worthless flesh shells."

            "This isn't open mike night at the Gothic Poetry Barn," Ban snorted, angry at not getting a rise out of Akabane.

            HEVN, meanwhile, had done what had been suggested by Akabane in the first place and called Himiko. She looked over, Ban and Ginji's shared phone nestled at her ear. "She wants to meet us up in the mountains, where the force of the explosion won't destroy any more property. They have the gem."

            "Good," Ban said, standing up and stretching. "Now let's just get back into our own bodies, and hopefully nothing more exciting will happen until then."

            Kazuki looked over at Himiko as she quietly hung up the phone. "What's wrong?"

            "What's wrong is that someone did hire me to deliver this gem. By now, they've got to have realized that something must have gone wrong, and it's not on its way to them. They're going to start looking for it."

            "Let's hope they don't find it before we can get back to our old selves," Shido grunted.

            "We can't let them get it, even then. They'd only use it to carry out their original plans for it," Kazuki answered, slightly miffed by Shido's "if it doesn't directly affect me, I don't care about it," innuendo.

            "We'll have to put it in a place they'll never find it," Himiko said with resolution, leading the group towards the arranged meeting place.

            A pair of trained binoculars followed the little three some back to the borrowed car they'd taken, as Himiko's motorcycle hadn't been large enough to fit two extra passengers on it even with the sidecar.

            "I have the deliver in site, and she does have the gem."

            "She must have decided to double cross us and sell it for the profit."

            The man holding the binoculars lowered them, fingering a sleek black riffle. "Should I eliminate her and the witnesses?"

            "Follow her, and when you're in a place where there's no one around, end them."

            Down below, Himiko was thinking about how good it was that they'd chosen not to meet in a populated place in case the second explosion was anything like the first. A possible assassination was the furthest thing from her, or anyone's, minds as they converged on the meeting place.


	6. Nekkid Battle

A/N: Excuse me, it's been pointed out that I left something INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT out of the last chapter. That is, that the gem, while in their possession… is no longer intact. Rejoining the broken pieces of the gem should switch the personalities back to normal, emphasis on the should. Again, that should have been in the last chapter, but when I did a tweak of the last part apparently that got lost in cyberspace. Again, my apologies. I now return you to your normally scheduled fic in progress.

            Ginji looked down at Akabane's shoes and rubbed one on the back of his leg, trying to get the dust off. He was feeling more than a bit apprehensive about having the real Akabane behind him. Ban grunted slightly, his hands curled around the steering wheel of his bug. At least HEVN had stopped suggesting that a sing-along might lighten the somber mood in the car.

            "I wonder what Makubex's last warning to us was supposed to be," Ban mused out loud, breaking through the awkward silence that had begun after having to hear Akabane sing a round of "If you're happy and you know it" with his own special brand of humor inserted into it. Ban wondered if Ginji would ever be able to hear that song again without crying.

            "I hope it's not something like 'this gem will kill you immediately upon use if you don't say the magic word three times before rejoining the shattered pieces."

            Ginji shifted his weight in his seat, trying to keep how bony Akabane's butt was from making his trip uncomfortable. "Natsumi-chan and Master said they'd try to get through to Makubex again and text my cell phone when they know what he wanted to tell us," Ginji said as happily as his worn out body would allow, waving Akabane's cell phone in the air.

            "That's not your phone," Akabane promptly pointed out. "Miss Manager has your cell phone."

            Ginji's face fell. "This is too confusing. I want my own body back…" Ginji whined.

            The lady bug chugged up next to Himiko's waiting motorcar. Himiko held up the pieces of the gem, a slight smile playing across her borrowed lips. "I'm about ready to get back into my own body," she sighed, almost as worn out as Ginji despite not having as many dangerous experiences with her borrowed body.

            HEVN, being the best at organizing, shuffled everyone back into the relative positions they had been standing in when the gem had shattered. "Do you think there will be another resulting explosion? I know that's why we came out here, to prevent blowing up any more buildings, but…"

            "It's better to be safe than sorry."

            "The explosion is probably what Makubex was trying to warn us about," Ban added, nodding HEVN's head slightly. He was going to miss those lovely boobs, but he wasn't going to miss the pain in his back they caused. HEVN's body was a nice place to visit, but he certainly wouldn't want to live there.

           Himiko held up the pieces of the gem, which glittered in her hands as though in anticipation of being rejoined together. She took a deep breath. It isn't easy to want to do something when you know the end result will be an explosion that will throw you a good couple of feet and knock you unconscious, but there were more reasons to get back to their own bodies than there were reasons not to.

            "Here it goes," she proclaimed, rejoining the pieces. As the resulting flash illuminated the forms of the little group gathered below, Ginji hear his cell phone ringing in the pocket of his pants as his consciousness faded into blackness. The warning call had arrived ten seconds too late.

            Once again, Ginji was the first of the group to awaken from having been blasted and thrown across the clearing. After a moment of fuzziness, his eyes cleared up. A bird was singing overhead. Ginji slowly pulled himself into a seated position. The trees around didn't look like they'd been touched at all, but there was definitely the smell of something having been burned to a crisp floating on the air. A thin layer of ashes coated the grass he was sitting in. So there hadn't been an _explosion_, per se, but something had been burned in the resulting flash of brilliant light.

            He reached up and touched his face and head, feeling short and rough spiked hair instead of Akabane's fine, long hair. He knew that hair, as he'd washed it enough. It was his own hair. Ginji's eyes began to cloud up with tears. He was in his own body! He was home, he was home!

            A breath of wind danced across Ginji's chest and he shivered. "Boy, it's cold out," he muttered to himself, rubbing his shoulders. Wait a second… hadn't he been wearing a shirt when they'd come up there? Wait a second… hadn't been wearing… pants, too?

            Ginji screamed to wake the dead and dived into a bush. So THAT'S what had burned up! "Baaaaan-chan!" he whimpered, terrified if what should happen if Akabane-san found him in that condition before Ban-chan woke up. A female scream from across the clearing, one that sounded like it came from Himiko, told him that he probably wasn't the only one awakening to find what the resulting explosion had done.

            Ginji reached out from the bush he was hiding in and snatched up his cell phone, lying miraculously untouched by the effects of the gem in the grass. Great! He could call Paul and ask him to bring extra clothes. Sure, Paul would laugh until his ribs hurt when he heard what had happened, but he'd at least be able to…

            "Not in serviceable area" the phone said in dull, blocky text.

            "NOT IN SERVICEABLE AREA?" Ginji screamed at the phone, shaking it angrily. "I just heard you ring! I just heard you ring!"

            "Ginji?" he heard Ban's sleepy voice say. "Are we in our own bodies?" Ban was just beginning to come to, hands twitching. Without warning, he suddenly sat up.

            Ginji's face turned white. "Ba-ban-chan… we're friends… bestest friends… but… I don't think… I want to know you… that well."

            Ban looked down and let out a similar shriek, his hands clamping down over his man parts. "WHERE THE HELL ARE MY CLOTHES?"           

            "Smell that burning in the air?" Ginji asked timidly.

            It took a moment for Ban to calm down enough to put the two together. For reasons no one will ever be able to explain, his glasses had survived the resulting clothes burning. "Well, at least the phone is okay. You can call Paul and-"

            "It says it's not in a serviceable area…"

            Ban's face reverted back to poorly drawn shock mode. "You- you're kidding, right?"

            Ginji weakly held up the phone for Ban to see. He snatched it away from Ginji and began stomping around in the clearing. "Come on, pick up reception! Pick up reception you expensive piece of something that came out of a dog's butt!"

            "Ba-ban-chan…"

            "WHAT?" Ban shouted angrily, spinning around to stare at Ginji.

            "We're… not… the only ones awake…"

            Ban froze, realizing the implications of Ginji's words. Slowly, exorcist-style, his head cranked around on his neck.

            Her body safely hidden behind a tree, Himiko's hands were clamped over her incredibly red face. "I saw- I saw it. All those years living with him and my brother, and I never..."

            Ban stammered. "No-now, Himiko, let's just be adults about this…"

            "It was so… so… tiny," she threw in, looking up with a grin that let him know that she wasn't the least bit actually embarrassed by Ban's… um… bare ass.

            "That's not funny!" Ban shouted, completely forgetting that more than the three of them existed and pointing an angry finger at Himiko. "If you weren't naked, I'd come over there and…"

            "And what? Beat her for telling the truth?" Shido asked, sitting with his hands in his own lap.

            "Can't we do anything without fighting?" Kazuki asked in resignation, using his hair as a shield for himself. Hey, at least he had something, compared to the others.

            "I think it's cute, Ban-chan," HEVN laughed, using Akabane as her personal shield. Akabane, for his part, was sitting with his sword in his lap, which actually worked quite nicely as a cover… but we won't go there with Freudian symbolism, shall we? "When did you get a tattoo there?"

            "And who is Takara?" Akabane threw in, unable to resist a good roast when there was one going on.

            "Shut up! Shut up! All of you!" Ban fumed angrily, running and hiding in a bush similar to Ginji.

            "Look, we can't just all sit around talking about Ban's butt tattoo and its size or placement. _Someone_ is going to have to go for help, probably by finding a place our cell phones can pick up reception."

            "How about you guys hand over the gem and save us the trouble of having to take it from you?" a deep voice suddenly boomed. The rag-tag group all looked up to find themselves staring down the barrels of several guns held by men in dark suits. "Maybe leaving your naked corpses here will make this look like some kind of bizarre cult murder and take the pressure off us, and save you guys the humiliation of having to be found alive like that. I mean, we can obviously see you don't have any weapons."

            Ginji's hand was curled in a fist. "Ban-chan, we can take them," he whispered.

            "But that would mean fighting naked!" Ban whispered back, hissing in anger at the suggestion.

            "Is that better than dying naked?" Kazuki asked, holding his bells, which had also survived the burning by some miracle.

            "What's the matter, snake-boy? Afraid you can't do it?" Shido whispered, looking overly confident.

            "I can do anything naked that I can do clothed!" Ban whisper-snapped back.

            "Naked or clothed doesn't matter to me, as long as I can have fun," Akabane shrugged.

            Ginji stared at Akabane, making sure to ONLY look at his face. "You're scary, Akabane-san, and I'm not really sure I wanted to hear that…"

            "I'd be up for joining you, but without a belt to hold my poisons, it would be a real hassle. HEVN and I will guard the gem," Himiko said, indicating that under no circumstances, even with her life at risk, would she be willing to run naked into a battle with a group of men. HEVN, sitting beside Himiko, nodded in equal agreement.

            "Hurry up, we haven't got all day and we don't' want your blood on the gem. Toss it over!" the man in the suit snarled.

            Ban sighed and pushed up his glasses. "They're wearing dark glasses so I can't just use my power on them. Looks like we're going to have to fight, whether we're clothed or not."

            "Perhaps dressed to kill or not would have been more humorous," Akabane suggested.

            "Shut up, Jackal. If they want a naked fight, then they've got one!" Ban shouted, leading the attack.

---

I know, I know, bad place to leave off, but I'm not in the mood to write a fight at the moment.

I DARE someone to fan art the fight. I triple dog dare you!


	7. Two Suits Four Men

A/N: Where have I been? Well, to put it simply, I have a job and a life-drawing class this summer. They keep me pretty busy. To put it in a more complex way, I have some medical issues that recently came to a head, so I spend more being sick than I'd really ideally like. I try to update when I can, though.

- - - -

            The leader of the men in suit's shoulders shook with laughter. "You intend to fight us completely _naked?_ You must be more insane than we originally thought!"

            "We'll see who is laughing when we beat you and take your clothes!" Ban shouted. "Snake bi-ow o ow ow ow ow!"

            "Ban-chan?!" Ginji asked, alarmed.

            Ban was holding his foot, tears forming in his eyes. "I stepped on a thistle plant."

            While Ban nursed his wounded foot and pride, the rest of the fight had already begun. Akabane felt slightly disappointed at the fact that he probably could have eliminated the entire opposing force in a few swipes, but Himiko had specifically shouted at him not to get blood on the clothes. Well, he's just have to be more… creative about where he planted his blades, and where he let the blood flow splash.

            Shido called up the dozens of field mice, but again came up against the same problem. How to have the mice attack without shredding the clothes? Perhaps he could just have them bite at the men's necks… but the mice had already received what they perceived as an "attack" signal, and were latched onto several of the men without regards to whether they damaged their clothes or not.

            The same problem was coming up yet again for Kazuki. He could immobilize them with his strings, but then how to get their clothes off intact without letting them go and having to deal with fighting them all over again?

            Meanwhile, Ginji was still tending to Ban's injured foot, pulling out tons of tiny barbs from Ban's skin while trying not to look at the general triangle region of Ban's crotch. Needless to say, the position one needs to be in to have spikes picked out of their foot isn't really conducive to covering one's privates.

            Not seeing Ban on the ground and attempting to stop the mice from destroying the men's suits, Shido tripped over Ban and sent both of them rolling down the slight incline. "Ban-chan! Shido-kun!" Ginji cried, attempting to run after the two rolling men. A couple of thugs stepped into his way, holding scary looking guns.

            "Excuse me, this is going to hurt, but I have to help Ban-chan," Ginji said apologetically, letting down a burst of thunder that fried both suits and their guns in place. He shoved past them as they fell over, smoking.

            Down at the bottom of the hill, Ban had landed flat on his belly with his arms and legs splayed. Shido had landed in the same position, only Shido had landed directly on top of where Ban had landed. Ginji, coming running, saw the way the two were lying and covered his big brown eyes. "Aye, aye, aye!" he cried, hands over his eyes. "Shido-kun, no! Think of Madoka-chan?"

            Wiping the mud that had clouded his vision off, Shido looked at naked Ginji hopping up and down with his eyes covered on the hillside. "What is that idiot talking abo-" right then, his precarious position in regards to Ban hit him. "AAAAAAH!" he cried in alarm and disgust, leaping off injured Ban.

            "I felt… something poking into my back when we rolled…" Ban whimpered, his eyes filled with tears. As his ears picked up a distant shout, his head shot up rapidly. The head on his shoulders, for those of you with sick minds. "Hi-Himiko!"          

            One of the suits stood behind Himiko, holding a gun to her head. He was holding her with his arm crossed over her chest, and she was holding the gem tactfully in front of herself. Another suit had HEVN, drooling slightly onto her bare shoulder. She struggled a bit, but he had quite a strong grip on her.

            "Drop your weapons or we'll kill these girls!" the suit ordered.

            Kazuki froze and looked over at Akabane, as they were the only two men who hadn't disappeared down the side of the hill. "I don't think we have a choice," Kazuki said dismally. "I don't want to see HEVN-san or Himiko-san hurt." Slowly, he pulled his bells out of his hair and dropped them onto the grass.

            "They're probably going to kill the girls anyway, seeing as how they have the gem now," Akabane shrugged. "But if you insist…"

            The suits faces went from leering happily at having forced Akabane to lay down the six scalpels he'd been immediately carrying, but began turning green when he started making a small pile of sharp objects in the grass. The pile just kept growing, and they could hear the weird black-haired man muttering "Fifty-six, fifty-seven…"

            "Where does he KEEP all those?" one suit whispered to the other.

            "I think that's not a question we want to ask, especially considering that he's not wearing any clothes…"

            Himiko looked over at HEVN, who returned the look while their captors were distracted. Almost in unison, the two girls ducked quickly down and slammed their elbows back- right into the suits unprotected crotches. The two men's faces went from green to white as they cried out, grabbing themselves in pain, allowing HEVN and Himiko to follow through by bashing their heads together and knocking them unconscious.

           Kazuki ran for his bells. One of the suits lunged at Akabane. "He can't possibly have any more knives!" the suit cried. However, find two sharp scalpels implanted right in his eyeballs quickly convinced him that his statement wasn't exactly correct. Meanwhile, from the base of the hill, Ban reappeared, covered in mud and leaves. "I'm here, Himiko!" he cried, ready to make a dramatic hero's entrance.

            "What took you so long?" Himiko asked, dressed in an ill-fitting suit. "We already beat them and stole their clothes."

            HEVN's suit was stretched tightly across her chest, causing Shido to blush and look away. Those were certainly things Madoka didn't have… not that he minded, of course! Not that he minded! HEVN's mouth was formed into a thin frown. "Of all the things I didn't miss about being a woman…" she sighed, noticing Shido's face and the cramps spreading through her lower body.

            The battle was long and hard, but in the end, the suits ran off like whipped puppies. Thus Ban, Ginji, Shido, and Kazuki sat in a circle, their faces showing strength and determination in spite of hardships. For you see, there were only two suits left to spread amongst the four of them. The other suits had been fried by Ginji, bloodied by Akabane, or chewed to rags by rats. Akabane, for his part, had no qualms about wearing a bloody suit, and was thus doing so and sitting with Himiko and HEVN.

            "I have to have a suit," Ban said firmly. "I'm the only one that can drive the Lady Bug, and traffic control wouldn't look lightly on a naked man driving through Tokyo.

            "Unfortunately, even I agree with that," Shido grunted. "Which leaves one suit for the three of us…"

            "What if the two people who are going to sit in front wear the pants, and whoever is going to sit in back wears just the shirts and puts the jackets across their laps?" Himiko suggested from where she was sitting.

            "That still leaves us to decide who will sit in front and who will sit in back, and one of you also has to sit in back because Himiko's sidecar only carries one."

            "I was actually going to drive HEVN back," Himiko said. Akabane, realizing the implication of that statement being that he was going to have to ride shoved in the backseat with two men not wearing pants, grinned broadly at Ginji. Tare-Ginji cowered up against Ban in response, shaking.

            "Wait, Ginji can go tare," Shido pointed out. "In tare-form, just the shirt would cover all of him."

            "But… but that means… I'd have to sit… in back… with… Akabane-san…"

            Akabane's grin broadened ever so slightly at the tips. Big tears appeared in Ginji's eyes. Ban put a hand in Ginji's hair, comfortingly. Then Ban sighed and said, "the monkey boy is right, Ginji."

            Ginji fell over from the sheer horror of the situation.

            That still left them to decide if Kazuki or Shido got to wear pants. The two looked at one another, then down at the pants, then back up again. "So…" Kazuki said sheepishly.

            "Looking at this logically, we can drop Shido off on Madoka's private property, where no one will see him… hanging out," HEVN sighed. "Kazuki, you have to run into an apartment building, don't you?"

            Shido's face fell. He really, really wanted those pants. After all, what would happen if he ran into that hospital nurse again without them? However, he fully understood HEVN's logic and was willing to bow to it. Not to mention how crazy Jubei would probably go if they brought Kazuki back sans pants, and no one really wanted to deal with Jubei-the-fruitcake.

            Ginji, in nothing more than a white dress shirt, trembled with fear on the opposite side of Shido. He'd been shoved in the back because of his lack of pants, and because of his small size and the necessity of pushing three into the back of the Lady Bug. Unfortunately, Akabane-san was also in the back, and still grinning that kill-happy-go-lucky grin. "Perhaps I should have offered to drive Jackal," Himiko mused as she helped HEVN into her sidecar.

            "And miss out on seeing Ginji shaking hard enough to qualify as an industrial strength jackhammer?" HEVN asked, her voice slightly cruel. Really, she couldn't be blamed. It _was_ that time of the month, after all, and what woman can be blamed for not feeling a man's pain at that time? "What are we going to do about this bauble?"

            "Throw it into a deep part of the ocean, where it will never be found and used for evil again," Himiko said resolutely.

            "Too bad it's too risky to damage it or we could slice it up and sell it as jewelry," HEVN sighed, watching the gem sparkle. It would have looked so nice to have a piece of it on her finger…

            "So, what did happen between you and Akabane when you were in Ban and Ginji's bodies?" Himiko asked, putting on her helmet and revving up her bike.

            HEVN snorted and tossed her long, blonde hair back. Boy, was she glad to have her own hair and body back. She'd missed them so much. "What happened between me and Akabane is between me and Akabane," she said.

            Himiko just took that as HEVN just being mysterious about the fact that nothing had happened as she followed Ban's car down the hill.

            Meanwhile, in the Lady Bug, Ginji kept shifting back and forth in his seat. "You look uncomfortable, Ginji-kun," Akabane noted. "Are you having trouble sitting? Did you hurt yourself in the fight?"

           "Huh? No! No! I just… ummm… Shido, can I borrow that jacket?" he asked. Shido handed the extra jacket to him, looking slightly confused as Ginji shoved it under his rear and used it as a pillow.

            Akabane, meanwhile, only smiled.

-

            The group gathered one last time with regards to the gem that had caused them so many problems, watching as the block of concrete Himiko had tied the gem to was hefted into the ocean. Kazuki, at the controls of the boat, watched the bubbles come up as it sank. "And that's the end of that," Kazuki said with a sense of finality.

            "Do you think one day we'll look back on this and laugh?" Himiko solemnly asked Ban.

            Ban shrugged and took a deep breath on his cigarette. "I think that depends on how quickly Ginji gets over being chosen Mr. Drag King, Tokyo."

            With that, the camera fades out on Ginji sitting on the bow of the ship, muttering things that we really don't want to hear about his dubious award. Wipe to black.

The End.

- - - -

Don't cry because it's over, I already have my next fic planned! (Other than baby backers, which I have to be in a certain mood to update).


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